THE FIRST PUNIC WAR

[13]

H

ANNIBAL was a Carthaginian general. He
acquired his great distinction as a warrior by
his desperate contests with the Romans. Rome and
Carthage grew up together on opposite sides of the
Mediterranean Sea. For about a hundred years they waged
against each other most dreadful wars. There were three
of these wars. Rome was successful in the end, and
Carthage was entirely destroyed.

There was no real cause for any disagreement between
these two nations. Their hostility to each other was
mere rivalry and spontaneous hate. They spoke a
different language; they had a different origin; and
they lived on opposite sides of the same sea. So they
hated and devoured each other.

Those who have read the history of Alexander the Great,
in this series, will recollect the
[14] difficulty he experienced in besieging and subduing
Tyre, a great maritime city, situated about two miles
from the shore, on the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean Sea. Carthage was originally founded by a
colony from this city of Tyre, and it soon became a
great commercial and maritime power like its mother.
The Carthaginians built ships, and with them explored
all parts of the Mediterranean Sea. They visited all
the nations on these coasts, purchased the commodities
they had to sell, carried them to other nations, and
sold them at great advances. They soon began to grow
rich and powerful. They hired soldiers to fight their
battles, and began to take possession of the islands of
the Mediterranean, and, in some instances, of points on
the main land. For example, in Spain: some of their
ships, going there, found that the natives had silver
and gold, which they obtained from veins of ore near
the surface of the ground. At first the Carthaginians
obtained this gold and silver by selling the natives
commodities of various kinds, which they had procured
in other countries; paying, of course, to the producers
only a very small price compared with what they
required the Spaniards to pay them. Finally, they took
possession of that part of Spain
[15] where the mines were situated, and worked the mines
themselves. They dug deeper; they employed skillful
engineers to make pumps to raise the water, which
always accumulates in mines, and prevents their being
worked to any great depth unless the miners have a
considerable degree of scientific and mechanical skill.
They founded a city here, which they called New
Carthage—Nova Carthago. They fortified and
garrisoned this city, and made it the center of their
operations in Spain. This city is called Carthagena to
this day.

Thus the Carthaginians did every thing by power of
money. They extended their operations in every
direction, each new extension bringing in new
treasures, and increasing their means of extending them
more. They had, besides the merchant vessels which
belonged to private individuals, great ships of war
belonging to the state. These vessels were called
galleys, and were rowed by oarsmen, tier above tier,
there being sometimes four and five banks of oars. They
had armies, too, drawn from different countries, in
various troops, according as different nations excelled
in the different modes of warfare. For instance, the
Numidians, whose country extended in the neighborhood
of
Car- [16] thage, on the African coast, were famous for their
horsemen. There were great plains in Numidia, and good
grazing, and it was, consequently, one of those
countries in which horses and horsemen naturally
thrive. On the other hand, the natives of the Balearic
Isles, now called Majorca, Minorca, and Ivica, were
famous for their skill as slingers. So the
Carthaginians, in making up their forces, would hire
bodies of cavalry in Numidia, and of slingers in the
Balearic Isles; and, for reasons analogous, they got
excellent infantry in Spain.

The tendency of the various nations to adopt and
cultivate different modes of warfare was far greater in
those ancient times than now. The Balearic Isles, in
fact, received their name from the Greek word
ballein, which means to throw with a sling. The
youth there were trained to perfection in the use of
this weapon from a very early age. It is said that
mothers used to practice the plan of putting the bread
for their boys' breakfast on the branches of trees,
high above their heads, and not allow them to have
their food to eat until they could bring it down with a
stone thrown from a sling.

Thus the Carthaginian power became greatly extended.
The whole government, however
[17] was exercised by a small body of wealthy and
aristocratic families at home. It was very much such a
government as that of England is at the present day,
only the aristocracy of England is based on ancient
birth and landed property, whereas in Carthage it
depended on commercial greatness, combined, it is true,
with hereditary family distinction. The aristocracy of
Carthage controlled and governed every thing. None but
its own sons could ordinarily obtain office or power.
The great mass of inhabitants were kept in a state of
servitude and vassalage. This state of things operated
then, as it does now in England, very unjustly and
hardly for those who were thus debased; but the result
was—and in this respect the analogy with England still
holds good—that a very efficient and energetic
government was created. The government of an oligarchy
makes sometimes a very rich and powerful state, but a
discontented and unhappy people.

Let the reader now turn to the map and find the place
of Carthage upon it. Let him imagine a great and rich
city there, with piers, and docks, and extensive
warehouses for the commerce, and temples, and public
edifices of splendid architecture, for the religious
and civil service
[18] of the state, and elegant mansions and palaces for the
wealthy aristocracy, and walls and towers for the
defense of the whole. Let him then imagine a back
country, extending for some hundred miles into the
interior of Africa, fertile and highly cultivated,
producing great stores of corn, and wine, and rich
fruits of every description. Let him then look at the
islands of Sicily, of Corsica, and Sardinia, and the
Baleares, and conceive of them as rich and prosperous
countries, and all under the Carthaginian rule. Look,
also, at the coast of Spain; see, in imagination, the
city of Carthagena, with its fortifications, and its
army, and the gold and silver mines, with thousands and
thousands of slaves toiling in them. Imagine fleets of
ships going continually along the shores of the
Mediterranean, from country to country, cruising back
and forth to Tyre, to Cyprus, to Egypt, to Sicily, to
Spain, carrying corn, and flax, and purple dyes, and
spices, and perfumes, and precious stones, and ropes,
and sails for ships, and gold and silver, and then
periodically returning to Carthage, to add the profits
they had made to the vast treasures of wealth already
accumulated there. Let the reader imagine all this with
the map before him, so as to have a distinct
[19] conception of the geographical relations of the
localities, and he will have a pretty correct idea of
the Carthaginian power at the time it commenced its
dreadful conflicts with Rome.

Rome itself was very differently situated. Rome had
been built by some wanderers from Troy, and it grew,
for a long time, silently and slowly, by a sort of
internal principle of life and energy. One region
after another of the Italian peninsula was merged in
the Roman state. They formed a population which was, in
the main, stationary and agricultural. They tilled the
fields; they hunted the wild beasts; they raised great
flocks and herds. They seem to have been a race—a sort
of variety of the human species—possessed of a very
refined and superior organization, which, in its
development, gave rise to a character of firmness,
energy, and force, both of body and mind, which has
justly excited the admiration of mankind. The
Carthaginians had sagacity—the Romans called it
cunning—and activity, enterprise and wealth. Their
rivals, on the other hand, were characterized by
genius, courage, and strength, giving rise to a certain
calm and indomitable resolution and energy, which has
since, in every age, been strongly associated, in the
minds of men, with the very word Roman.

[20] The progress of nations was much more slow in ancient
days than now, and these two rival empires continued
their gradual growth and extension, each on its own
side of the great sea which divided them, for five
hundred years, before they came into collision. At
last, however, the collision came. It originated in the
following way:

By looking at the map, the reader will see that the
island of Sicily is separated from the main land by a
narrow strait called the Strait of Messina. This strait
derives its name from the town of Messina, which is
situated upon it, on the Sicilian side. Opposite
Messina, on the Italian side, there was a town named
Rhegium. Now it happened that both these towns had been
taken possession of by lawless bodies of soldiery. The
Romans came and delivered Rhegium, and punished the
soldiers who had seized it very severely. The Sicilian
authorities advanced to the deliverance of Messina. The
troops there, finding themselves thus threatened, sent
to the Romans to say that if they, the Romans, would
come and protect them, they would deliver Messina into
their hands.

The question, what answer to give to this application,
was brought before the Roman
sen- [21] ate, and caused them great perplexity. It seemed very
inconsistent to take sides with the rebels of Messina,
when they had punished so severely those of Rhegium.
Still the Romans had been, for a long time, becoming
very jealous of the growth and extension of the
Carthaginian power. Here was an opportunity of meeting
and resisting it. The Sicilian authorities were about
calling for direct aid from Carthage to recover the
city, and the affair would probably result in
establishing a large body of Carthaginian troops
within sight of the Italian shore, and at a point where it
would be easy for them to make hostile incursions into
the Roman territories. In a word, it was a case of what
is called political necessity; that is to say, a case
in which the interests of one of the parties in a
contest were so strong that all considerations of
justice, consistency, and honor are to be sacrificed to
the promotion of them. Instances of this kind of
political necessity occur very frequently in the
management of public affairs in all ages of the world.

The contest for Messina was, after all, however,
considered by the Romans merely as a pretext, or rather
as an occasion, for commencing the struggle which they
had long been desirous
[22] of entering upon. They evinced their characteristic
energy and greatness in the plan which they adopted at
the outset. They knew very well that the power of
Carthage rested mainly on her command of the seas, and
that they could not hope successfully to cope with her
till they could meet and conquer her on her own
element. In the mean time, however, they had not a
single ship and not a single sailor, while the
Mediterranean was covered with Carthaginian ships and
seamen. Not at all daunted by this prodigious
inequality, the Romans resolved to begin at once the
work of creating for themselves a naval power.

The preparations consumed some time; for the Romans had
not only to build the ships, they had first to learn
how to build them. They took their first lesson from a
Carthaginian galley which was cast away in a storm upon
the coast of Italy. They seized this galley, collected
their carpenters to examine it, and set woodmen at work
to fell trees and collect materials for imitating it.
The carpenters studied their model very carefully,
measured the dimensions of every part, and observed the
manner in which the various parts were connected and
secured together. The heavy shocks which vessels are
[23] exposed to from the waves makes it necessary to secure
great strength in the construction of them; and, though
the ships of the ancients were very small and imperfect
compared with the men-of-war of the present day, still
it is surprising that the Romans could succeed at all
in such a sudden and hasty attempt at building them.

They did, however, succeed. While the ships were
building, officers appointed for the purpose were
training men, on shore, to the art of rowing them.
Benches, like the seats which the oarsman would occupy
in the ships, were arranged on the ground, and the
intended seamen were drilled every day in the movements
and action of rowers. The result was, that in a few
months after the building of the ships was commenced,
the Romans had a fleet of one hundred galleys of five
banks of oars ready. They remained in harbor with them
for some time, to give the oarsmen the opportunity to
see whether they could row on the water as well as on
the land, and then boldly put to sea to meet the
Carthaginians.

There was one part of the arrangements made by the
Romans in preparing their fleets which was strikingly
characteristic of the determined
[24] resolution which marked all their conduct. They
constructed machines containing grappling irons, which
they mounted on the prows of their vessels. These
engines were so contrived, that the moment one of the
ships containing them should encounter a vessel of the
enemy, the grappling irons would fall upon the deck of
the latter, and hold the two firmly together, so as to
prevent the possibility of either escaping from the
other. The idea that they themselves should have any
wish to withdraw from the encounter seemed entirely out
of the question. Their only fear was that the
Carthaginian seamen would employ their superior skill
and experience in naval maneuvers in making their
escape. Mankind have always regarded the action of the
Romans, in this case, as one of the most striking
examples of military courage and resolution which the
history of war has ever recorded. An army of landsmen
come down to the sea-shore, and, without scarcely
having ever seen a ship, undertake to build a fleet,
and go out to attack a power whose navies covered the
sea, and made her the sole and acknowledged mistress of
it. They seize a wrecked galley of their enemies for
their model; they build a hundred vessels like it:
they
prac- [25] tice maneuvers for a short time in port; and then go forth
to meet the fleets of their powerful enemy, with
grappling machines to hold them, fearing nothing but
the possibility of their escape.

The result was as might have been expected. The
Romans captured, sunk, destroyed, or dispersed the
Carthaginian fleet which was brought to oppose them.
They took the prows of the ships which they captured
and conveyed them to Rome, and built what is called a
rostral pillar of them. A rostral pillar is a
column ornamented with such beaks or prows, which were,
in the Roman language, called rostra. This
column was nearly destroyed by lightning about fifty
years afterward, but it was repaired and rebuilt again, and
it stood then for many centuries, a very striking and
appropriate monument of this extraordinary naval
victory. The Roman commander in this case was the
consul Duilius. The rostral column was erected in honor
of him. In digging among the ruins of Rome, there was
found what was supposed to be the remains of this
column, about three hundred years ago.

The Romans now prepared to carry the war into Africa itself.
Of course it was easy, after
[26] their victory over the Carthaginian fleet, to transport
troops across the sea to the Carthaginian shore. The
Roman commonwealth was governed at this time by a
senate, who made the laws, and by two supreme executive
officers, called consuls. They thought it was safer to
have two chief magistrates than one, as each of the two
would naturally be a check upon the other. The result
was, however, that mutual jealousy involved them often
in disputes and quarrels. It is thought better, in
modern times, to have but one chief magistrate in the
state, and to provide other modes to put a check upon
any disposition he might evince to abuse his powers.

The Roman consuls, in time of war, took command of the
armies. The name of the consul upon whom it devolved to
carry on the war with the Carthaginians, after this
first great victory, was Regulus, and his name has been
celebrated in every age, on account of his
extraordinary adventures in this campaign, and his
untimely fate. How far the story is strictly true it is
now impossible to ascertain, but the following is the
story, as the Roman historians relate it:

At the time when Regulus was elected consul he was a
plain man, living simply on his farm, maintaining
himself by his own industry,
[27] and evincing no ambition or pride. His fellow-citizens,
however, observed those qualities of mind in him which
they were accustomed to admire, and made him consul. He
left the city and took command of the army. He enlarged
the fleet to more than three hundred vessels. He put
one hundred and forty thousand men on board and sailed
for Africa. One or two years had been spent in making
these preparations, which time the Carthaginians had
improved in building new ships; so that, when the
Romans set sail, and were moving along the coast of
Sicily, they soon came in sight of a larger
Carthaginian fleet assembled to oppose them. Regulus
advanced to the contest. The Carthaginian fleet was
beaten as before. The ships which were not captured or
destroyed made their escape in all directions, and
Regulus went on, without further opposition, and landed
his forces on the Carthaginian shore. He encamped as
soon as he landed, and sent back word to the Roman
senate asking what was next to be done.

The senate, considering that the great difficulty and
danger, viz., that of repulsing the Carthaginian fleet,
was now past, ordered Regulus to send home nearly all
the ships and a very large part of the army, and with
the rest
[28] to commence his march toward Carthage. Regulus obeyed:
he sent home the troops which had been ordered home,
and with the rest began to advance upon the city.

Just at this time, however, news came out to him that
the farmer who had had the care of his land at home had
died, and that his little farm, on which rested his
sole reliance for the support of his family, was going
to ruin. Regulus accordingly sent to the senate,
asking them to place some one else in command of the
army, and to allow him to resign his office, that he
might go home and take care of his wife and children.
The senate sent back orders that he should go on with
his campaign, and promised to provide support for his
family, and to see that some one was appointed to take
care of his land. This story is thought to illustrate
the extreme simplicity and plainness of all the habits
of life among the Romans in those days. It certainly
does so, if it is true. It is, however, very
extraordinary, that a man who was intrusted, by such a
commonwealth, with the command of a fleet of a hundred
and thirty vessels, and an army of a hundred and forty
thousand men, should have a family at home dependent for
subsistence on the hired cultivation of seven acres of
land. Still, such is the story.

[29] Regulus advanced toward Carthage, conquering as he
came. The Carthaginians were beaten in one field after
another, and were reduced, in fact, to the last
extremity, when an occurrence took place which turned
the scale. This was the arrival of a large body of
troops from Greece, with a Grecian general at their
head. These were troops which the Carthaginians had
hired to fight for them, as was the case with the rest
of the army. But these were Greeks, and the
Greeks were of the same race, and possessed the same
qualities, as the Romans. The newly-arrived Grecian
general evinced at once such military superiority, that
the Carthaginians gave him the supreme command. He
marshaled the army, accordingly, for battle. He had a
hundred elephants in the van. They were trained to rush
forward and trample down the enemy. He had the Greek
phalanx in the center, which was a close, compact body
of many thousand troops, bristling
with long, iron-pointed spears, with which the men
pressed forward, bearing every thing before them.
Regulus was, in a word, ready to meet Carthaginians,
but he was not prepared to encounter Greeks. His army
was put to flight, and he was taken prisoner. Nothing
could
[30] exceed the excitement and exultation in the city when
they saw Regulus, and five hundred other Roman
soldiers, brought captive in. A few days before, they
had been in consternation at the imminent danger of his
coming in as a ruthless and vindictive conqueror.

The Roman senate were not discouraged by this disaster.
They fitted out new armies, and the war went on,
Regulus being kept all the time at Carthage as a close
prisoner. At last the Carthaginians authorized him to
go to Rome as a sort of commissioner, to propose to the
Romans to exchange prisoners and to make peace. They
exacted from him a solemn promise that if he was
unsuccessful he would return. The Romans had taken many
of the Carthaginians prisoners in their naval combats,
and held them captive at Rome. It is customary, in such
cases, for the belligerent nations to make an exchange,
and restore the captives on both sides to their friends
and home. It was such an exchange of prisoners as this
which Regulus was to propose.

When Regulus reached Rome he refused to enter the city,
but he appeared before the senate without the walls, in
a very humble garb and with the most subdued and
unassuming
de- [31] meanor. He was no longer, he said, a Roman officer, or
even citizen, but a Carthaginian prisoner, and he
disavowed all right to direct, or even to counsel, the
Roman authorities in respect to the proper course to be
pursued. His opinion was, however, he said, that the
Romans ought not to make peace or to exchange
prisoners. He himself and the other Roman prisoners
were old and infirm, and not worth the exchange; and,
moreover, they had no claim whatever on their country,
as they could only have been made prisoners in
consequence of want of courage or patriotism to die in
their country's cause. He said that the Carthaginians
were tired of the war, and that their resources were
exhausted, and that the Romans ought to press forward
in it with renewed vigor, and leave himself and the
other prisoners to their fate.

The senate came very slowly and reluctantly to the
conclusion to follow this advice. They, however, all
earnestly joined in attempting to persuade Regulus that
he was under no obligation to return to Carthage. His
promise, they said, was extorted by the circumstances
of the case, and was not binding. Regulus, however,
insisted on keeping his faith with his enemies.
[32] He sternly refused to see his family, and, bidding the
senate farewell, he returned to Carthage. The
Carthaginians, exasperated at his having himself
interposed to prevent the success of his mission,
tortured him for some time in the most cruel manner,
and finally put him to death. One would think that he
ought to have counseled peace and an exchange of
prisoners, and he ought not to have refused to see his
unhappy wife and children; but it was certainly very
noble in him to refuse to break his word.

The war continued for some time after this, until, at
length, both nations became weary of the contest, and
peace was made. The following is the treaty which was
signed. It shows that the advantage, on the whole, in
this first Punic war, was on the part of the Romans:

"There shall be peace between Rome and Carthage. The
Carthaginians shall evacuate all Sicily. They shall not
make war upon any allies of the Romans. They shall
restore to the Romans, without ransom, all the
prisoners which they have taken from them, and pay them
within ten years three thousand two hundred talents of
silver."